They started walking again the next morning.

After all the shouting the night before, the quiet between them was like a deep pool in a forest. There was a lovely stillness that they didn't feel like disturbing just yet. Plenty of time later for questions and bickering (And there would be some of that, without question. Neither of them was willing to do without it.) For now they kept to the occasional whisper, or a quick, almost shy, smile. It would take some getting used to, the idea that they both mattered to each other a great deal more that they had ever admitted, even to themselves.

They walked hand in hand through the enemy Tower in almost unbroken silence, and for a while there weren't any problems in the universe.

At least until they found the Doctor's TARDIS..

* * *

Sarah was with him, so that was all right. Better than it would have been otherwise. He might have been reduced to..well, he would have been reduced. Crushed. Having a part of oneself ripped away and stomped on can do that.

"Isn't there.." Sarah clung to his hand as they walked to the door at the other side of the room. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

"I'm afraid not. Look there." The Doctor pointed to the area just outside the room's main entrance. Sarah gasped at the flood of colors that had been waiting just out of sight. There were so many guards and weapons crowded into one space that wisps of color swirled all through the Pause distortion. "More at each entrance I'd guess. They'll have troops posted nine-deep around the old girl, ready to snatch us up the moment we stepped into real-time long enough to unlock the door. It's the first thing they figured I'd do." He looked back over his shoulder and heaved a sigh that seemed to come all the way from his boots. "Well, want to do anyway."

Their search for the TARDIS had come to nothing. The ancient time machine, an almost constant presence in the Doctor's life since his travels began, had been dragged to a refinery, and was next in line to be scrapped. The TARDIS' time-traveling mechanism they found pushed to one side, trailing torn wires, broken into pieces.

Odd that the Time Lords had known how to break into the TARDIS without a key, and without damaging the door. They had to have had some very specific information about how it had been built. Did their records really go back that far? Or had the Master somehow told them what to do? He would probably never know. The Master wasn't available for questions anymore, and the after this the Doctor didn't think he'd be on speaking terms with the Time Lords for a very long time. If ever.

"Doctor I'm so sorry.."

"It's all right, Sarah. I should have realized the Time Lords had this planned when the Castellan didn't show up for my trial. If you could call it a trial. More like a diversion. See that break there, where they cut through the stabilizer?" He pointed to center section of the time- traveling mechanism. "Look at the edges. Melted through. That wasn't done in just an hour. It takes time to do that kind of damage; and even more time to get through all the safeguards I installed." He shook his head wearily. "I thought they were trying to decide if I could stay, when in reality they were calculating how closely I'd be guarded for the rest of my life. Old obsolete model number 40; Enaral must have had her brought to the refinery the moment after I invited myself to Gallifrey. They never planned to let her leave. Or me." He took one last look as they left the chaos of the refinery behind. "Poor thing. Come on."

"Come on where? How are we supposed to get off the planet now?"

"Oh," the Doctor said in his most casual tone. "I'll just have to borrow another TARDIS."

"What?!"

"Well it's been almost two thousand years since I borrowed the first one. I should get in some practice. Otherwise I might get rusty."

* * *

"There."

"That?!"

"Why not?"

"Doctor, even I can see it's not finished yet."

"Perfect! That means it's their latest model."

"So instead of quirks from a machine that's too old, we'll have bugs from a machine that's too new."

"Comforting thought, isn't it."

This was clearly one of those times when arguing wouldn't work. The Doctor had made up his mind, taking them past several temptingly unguarded storage rooms (or berths, or parking lots, or whatever it is you call a place you put time-machines in) to get here. The room didn't look any different from the refinery where they'd left the old TARDIS; it had the same combination of sterility, mind-boggling precision, and raw force. Appearances aside, the Doctor insisted that it was one of Gallifrey's research and development laboratories. And there at the far side of a room, on a low pedestal surrounded by some rather dangerous looking machinery, was the product of some of that research: a bizarre-looking time-machine.

Bizarre that is, in that one generally didn't expect to find a bright-green- with-white-trim tool-shed on an alien world.

"I still don't see how you plan to walk off with that thing, and with the entire planet waiting for you to appear."

"Nothing simpler. The Time Lords will be waiting for me to take back the old TARDIS, or borrow another obsolete model, the way I did before." Sarah had noticed the Doctor's use of the word "borrow" in place of "steal", but decided not to comment. "No one would expect me to take a prototype from right under their noses." There was a long pause while he took various instruments out of his trouser pockets, then he added, "I also studied all the security protocols and systems for this entire area and designed a few new lock-breaking tools before I came back to Gallifrey. But really, it's the element of surprise that counts."

Unbelievable. "I thought you'd planned to just retire quietly on Galifrey."

"Well I thought I had. Get ready now."

"What, right now?" Sarah looked around nervously. "When will we leave the Pause?"

"We left it about two seconds ago. Run."

"You mean we've..wha, HEY!" The Doctor was already halfway across the room, leaving her to race to catch up.

By the time she reached the TARDIS the Doctor was hard at work on the lock, doing something to it that made her eyes hurt.

"Temporal trap field connected to the lock," he explained. "Engineers always think these things are so threatening." A grimace of pain crossed his face as his hands appeared to double, then vanish, then reappear slightly blurred. "Which is understandable."

There was a sudden hissing sound, almost below hearing.

"Doctor.."

"I hear it." The lock stubbornly refused to budge, and the hissing was getting louder. Beads of sweat stood out on the Doctor's forehead. "That'll be something to knock us out until Security gets here. That, or it'll kill us. It all depends on how secret this TARDIS is supposed to be. Just a few more seconds.."

Sarah scanned the room frantically, looking for anything, anything at all that could help. Knowing the Time Lords, whatever gas they were flooding the room with wouldn't be something they could escape by holding their breath. She could almost see the gas getting closer and closer, turning the very air against their skin into poison..

Inspiration struck as her gaze lit on what looked like a piece of welding equipment. Not even stopping to think, she picked up the heavy piece of machinery and swung it into a bank of computers with all her strength.

Electricity crackled and arced (she'd let go just in time); there was a satisfying explosion, then fire and a great deal of smoke poured from the crumpled monitors. "Hurry!" she screamed at the Doctor, who had paused for an instant to stare in open-mouthed wonder. "We've only got seconds left!"

Her words were almost drowned out by the clang of doors slamming shut, and then the room was filled with the howling roar of wind rushing through hidden vents.

The best way to put out a fire without breaking anything is to simply take away the air.

Sarah's vision had gone blurred with shocking suddenness. The ruse had taken away the approaching gas, but gained them a few moments at best. Already the fire had gone out, and there wasn't enough oxygen left to breathe. Everything went silent as all sound left with the air.

The Doctor managed at last to pry the door open, shaking his fingers as the lock spitefully bit him with a last spark. Gasping, Sarah stumbled inside, the Doctor pushing from behind. He cycled the door shut and dove for what Sarah could only hope was a control panel (impossible to see through the growing blackness).

And then just like that, her vision cleared and she could breathe again.

The Doctor and Sarah looked across the room, caught each other with identical expressions of gasping for air, and burst out laughing.

"Well I'm glad that.." "However did you.."

Another laugh.

"You first," Sarah giggled, then, "no, wait," it was suddenly necessary to not be standing anymore, "..just a minute.."

The Doctor was next to her in a moment, lowering her gently to the floor. "Easy now, deep breaths, no don't try to get up.."

"Fine, I'm fine, just dizzy is all." She tried to stand, but the room kept pitching to one side. "Are we all right? Did we get away?"

"Yes yes, we're well away. The TARDIS is already in the Vortex." The Doctor helped her to sit upright, smoothing a strand of hair away from her face. "That was very quick thinking back there." His tone was frankly admiring. "However did you know that would work?"

"Newspapers do something like that when the presses catch fire," She rested her head on her arms, trying to blink the room back into focus. "They take away the air by filling the whole," she took another deep breath, "press room with carbon dioxide in a few seconds."

"Im 'press' ive."

"You stop that." She tried to glare, but the smile ruined the effect. "None of your awful jokes."

"Until you're feeling better."

"Deal."

They shook hands gravely. "Now that that's settled, I think it's time we got as far away from this planet as possible. Are you ready to leave?"

"I suppose so." Sarah hadn't bothered to get up from the floor; her legs still felt unsteady. The Doctor of course was annoyingly unaffected, standing up and moving about the controls without a trace of fatigue. "Maybe we should have a look about your new time-machine before we rush off to who-knows-where."

"Plenty of time for that later. The controls aren't too different from the old ones; everything else is just scenery." He thumped a console admirably. "This will be just fine. Better than the last, really."

All of this sounded a little too bright, a little forced. He could be putting up a brave front for her sake, or for his. Not sure of his mood, Sarah asked timidly, "Isn't there anything we could take from the old TARDIS as a memento?"

The Doctor smiled, but without much humor. "Yes, we could take its computer memory as a memento. Also its _______ and _______, and I might even be able to fit the _______ through the door." Sarah's mind blanked out the terminology. The words were nothing she could understand, and it annoyed her that the Doctor already knew that. He continued, a touch condescendingly, "All of this is beside the point, because we'd be captured the moment we materialized outside the old TARDIS."

Nettled, Sarah shot back, "Well why don't we just materialize inside it then?"

The Doctor's head snapped around. "What?"

Speaking very slowly, she explained, "We could take this TARDIS inside the other one." At the Doctor's blank expression she clarified, "I mean, the way I understand it, or at least the way you've explained it, a TARDIS materializes by creating a gate between the place inside the TARDIS and anywhere in the universe, right? " The Doctor nodded. "Well, the inside of the TARDIS is part of the universe, so bringing one TARDIS inside another would be like creating a gate between the two.."

The Doctor was staring at her so intently that she trailed off. "Or has that been tried before?"

"Oh probably, probably," the Doctor replied, turning back to the console. "I've had so many amazingly clever ideas in my time, I can't possibly be expected to remember them all."

A wide range of emotions passed over Sarah's face: annoyance and disappointment, then surprise at the back-handed compliment, and finally a delighted grin which she quickly suppressed before the Doctor looked up from the controls.

"We'll try it."